As I was getting off the BART last week, one of the many homeless men who have made the 24th St. BART station the center of their social universe snagged my attention with a few frantic waves. I expected him to ask for money, or a cigarette, but instead he wanted a pen. Did you know that when you are a writer, there is a secret contract to which you must always abide? The contract reads like this: when someone asks you for a writing utensil, you are both emotionally and professionally obligated to give it to them. So I braced my shoulders against the wind and began digging around in my bag for the pen which, among my wallet and glasses case and emergency allergy inhaler and various other feminine necessities proved incredibly difficult to find.
The man had a phone number written on his hand. It was less written than scrawled, less scrawled than carved into his skin, which appeared husked like a stalk of corn. “This is my lifeline, you know? If it rubs off of my hand and I can’t remember it, I’ll be totally screwed.” He fished around in his torn wallet for a scrap of paper on which to copy the number. Seeing the patchy skin around his eyes and the crumbs of dirt beneath his fingernails, and knowing there is a crack epidemic in parts of my neighborhood left over from the 90’s, I suddenly feared that I was searching for a pen so that this man wouldn’t lose the number of his drug dealer. But I kept digging, wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt.